Sullivan's
Travels (1941) is generally considered one of celebrated writer/director
Preston Sturges' greatest dramatic comedies - and a satirical statement
of his own director's creed. One of his more interesting and intelligent
films from a repertoire of about twelve films in his entire career,
Sturges' Sullivan's Travels satirizes Hollywood pretension
and excesses with his particular brand of sophisticated verbal
wit and dialogue, satire and fast-paced slapstick.

Sturges was
one of the first scriptwriters in the sound era to direct his own
screenplays. He was assisted by future westerns film director Anthony
Mann, and cinematographer John Seitz (who later filmed such notable film
noirs as This Gun For Hire (1942), Double
Indemnity (1944), The Big Clock (1948), and Sunset
Boulevard (1950), as well as two other Sturges works, Hail
the Conquering Hero (1944) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
(1944)).

This witty journey film from Paramount Studios skillfully
mixes every conceivable cinematic genre type and tone of film possible
- tragic melodrama, farce, prison film, serious drama, social documentary,
slapstick, romance, comedy, action, and even musical, in about a
dozen sequences. Due to confusion over the varying, inconsistent
moods within the film, the marketing campaign decided to focus on
Veronica Lake's peekaboo hairdo instead, with the tagline:

"VERONICA
LAKE's ON THE TAKE."

Visual gags in the comic scenes include
a prolonged cross-country car chase, a pratfall into a mansion's
swimming pool, changing facial expressions in a portrait, and tramps
scampering onto boxcars, among others.

The film's title is a vague
reference to Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift's satirical
1726 tale of Lemuel Gulliver's fanciful journey into strange, unknown
worlds of Lilliputians, Brobdingnags, Houyhnhnms, and Laputians).
In addition, the main character John L. (Lloyd) Sullivan was also
the name of a well-known cultural figure of the time, deceased sports
hero-boxer John L. (Lawrence) Sullivan, the first heavyweight champion
of gloved-boxing in the late 19th century.

The film tells of the 'mission' of 'Sully' (Joel McCrea),
a big-shot Hollywood director of lightweight comedies to experience
suffering in the world before producing his next socially-conscious
film of hard times - an epic titled 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'
about the common man. [Film-makers Joel and Ethan Coen paid homage
to Sturges and his admirable film by naming their own 21st century
film O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)?] After some failed
attempts dressed as a hobo and companionship on the road with an
aspiring blonde actress simply called The Girl (Veronica Lake in
her second picture following her work in I Wanted Wings (1941))
and wearing boy's clothes, he succeeds in losing his freedom, identity
and name, health, pride and money. Incarcerated in a prison work
camp as the end result of his misadventures, and as part of an audience
of chain-gang convicts watching a screening in a Southern black church
of a Walt Disney cartoon (starring Mickey Mouse and Pluto), he retains
one final ability - - to laugh. He succeeds in understanding that
his attitude toward the poor had bordered on patronization. He finally
realizes the uplifting power of laughter, and decides to return to
his true calling - the making of entertaining comedies to entertain
rather than to edify.

Having chosen a misguided film director as the main
character of his own film, many critics have generally assumed that
the film has a personal, introspective, autobiographical slant, with
Sturges arguing for and affirming the production of light comedies
(to lift viewers' spirits) while providing commentary upon serious
'message' films. However, the superb film lacked even a single Academy
Award Oscar nomination.

The Story

The film's titles appear after a paper-wrapped book
(with a Paramount Picture seal) is opened by well-manicured ladies'
hands. A book cover portrays the main character [Sullivan] and his
female companion [The Girl] dressed as tramp-costumed hoboes. They
appear - like Gulliver himself - poised above what look like little
people - symbolic Lilliputians. The credits are displayed as the
viewer is led further inside the book that is prefaced with a dedication:

To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley
mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all
nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this
picture is affectionately dedicated.

In the opening sequence, the conclusion of a dramatic
film (a "film within a film") is being watched in a Hollywood
studio office. [Is the ambiguous film a rough-draft, or a competing
picture, or something else?] It ends with a moving freight train
roaring through the night. On the roof of one of the boxcars, two
men, a young vagrant/hobo and a railroad yard boss, are engaged in
a brutal struggle for their lives. The yard boss pulls out a revolver
and with a series of gunshots, fires at his adversary. The victim
locks his adversary in a stranglehold. When the train reaches a bridge,
both tumble sideways from the top of the car into the water below.
The train whistles loudly as they fall. [Capital and Labor symbolically
drown together in the moral lesson of the film.] Through the gurgling
water, "THE END" slowly dissolves into view with a swelling
musical finale.

In a dark, projection screening room, successful comedy
film director John 'Sully' Sullivan (Joel McCrea) rises to his feet.
Speaking to studio chiefs Mr. Lebrand (Robert Warwick) and Mr. Hadrian
(Porter Hall), Sullivan is filled with enthusiastic, but naive praise
for the 'socially-significant' aspects of a recently-successful film
(not his own) that he uses as an argument for making his own first
socially-aware film. One of the studio chiefs is disinterested in
films that teach a moral lesson. The opening, five and a half minute
scene in the studio chief's private office is a classic Sturges mixture
of rapid-fire, crisp, driving dialogue and satirical drama. Tired
of doing comedies, Sullivan wishes his next film would be more relevant
and meaningful - "a true canvas of the suffering of humanity":

Sullivan: This picture is an ANSWER to Communists.
It shows we're awake and not dunking our heads in the sand like
a bunch of ostriches. I want this picture to be a commentary on
modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the
average man.
Lebrand: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: A little, but I don't want to stress it. I want this picture
to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this
to be a picture of dignity - a true canvas of the suffering of humanity.
Lebrand: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: With a little sex in it.
Hadrian: How about a nice musical?
Sullivan: How can you talk about musicals at a time like this? With
the world committing suicide, with corpses piling up in the street,
with grim death gargling at you from every corner, with people slaughtered
like sheep!
Hadrian: Maybe they'd like to forget that.
Sullivan: Then why do they hold this one over for a fifth week at
the Music Hall? For the ushers?
Hadrian: It died in Pittsburgh.
Lebrand: Like a dog.
Sullivan: What do they know in Pittsburgh?
Lebrand: They know what they like.
Sullivan: If they knew what they liked, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh.
That's no argument.

The well-established, top-money director known for
comedies wants to make a serious, solemn film ("a million dollar
production") for his next effort, but it is almost sacrilegious
for him to suggest to a Hollywood production boss a realistic film "as
the sociological and artistic medium that it is"
depicting the drama of suffering, hardship, and poverty. Previously,
he had enjoyed success for light comedies, such as So Long Sarong, Hey
Hey in the Hayloft, and Ants in Your Plants of 1939. Lebrand
reminds Sullivan that his previous films weren't meaningful message
pictures:

...they weren't about tramps, and lockouts, and sweatshops,
and people eating garbage in alleys and living in piano boxes and
ashcans and...They were about nice clean young people who fell
in love, with laughter and music and legs - you take that scene
in "Hey Hey in the Hayloft"...

The director argues that conditions have changed in
their "troublous times."
To discourage him, Hadrian pointedly asks Sullivan about his own real-life
experiences with trouble - knowing full-well that the director had
an educated upbringing and privileged life rather than a life of want
and hard luck. Lebrand feels that Sullivan's protected, sheltered background
is precisely why his successful, non-message pictures "have been
so light, so cheerful, so inspiring."
Ruefully, Sullivan admits his first-hand ignorance about trouble, poverty,
and misery, and the studio representatives believe they have persuaded
him to reconsider and not film his next project: O Brother, Where
Art Thou? - a message film that would surely fail at the box office.
But they have misread Sullivan's impulsive nature and his desire to
sample life's troubles. After exhibiting a pensive, trancelike disposition,
he snaps out of it: "I'm going down to the wardrobe and get some
old clothes, some old shoes and I'm gonna start out with ten cents
in my pocket. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm not coming back
till I know what trouble is."

To live the life of a bum and discover more about "real" American
life first-hand, he bids the studio executives goodbye for "maybe
a week, maybe a month, maybe a year." Unworried, he leaves to
prepare for his 'travels.' After Sullivan departs, Hadrian suggests
that they protect their valuable investment. Through the intercom,
Lebrand orders a copy (to read) of the script/book for Sullivan's
new film.

Sullivan plans to go ahead with his experiential journey
to find out what it's like to be poor and needy before filming a
picture about it. In his own mirrored bedroom with his valet (Eric
Blore), Sullivan is assisted in dressing and modeling different tramp
outfits from the wardrobe department. The valet has an opinion of
his hobo walk: "Isn't that overdoing it a bit, Sir? Why break
their hearts?" Burrows (Robert Grieg), Sullivan's butler coldly
disapproves of Sullivan's 'caricaturized' disguise as a down-and-out
hobo wearing shabby clothes, because the poor insist upon their privacy
and don't want any intruders. He also tells Sullivan some of the
less-than-romantic symptoms of poverty - a futile speech to dissuade
his employer from journeying out since poverty is "to be shunned":

Butler: The poor know all about poverty and only
the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.
Sullivan: But I'm doing it for the poor. Don't you understand?
Butler: I doubt if they would appreciate it, sir. They rather resent
the invasion of their privacy. I believe quite properly, sir. Also,
such excursions can be extremely dangerous, sir. I worked for a gentleman
once, who likewise, with two friends, accoutred themselves, as you
have, sir, and then went out for a lark. They have not been heard
from since...You see, sir, rich people and theorists, who are usually
rich people, think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches,
as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn't, sir.
Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent
in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and
despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from,
even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.
Sullivan: Well, you seem to have made quite a study of it.
Butler: Quite unwillingly, sir. Will that be all, sir?

Even the valet has misgivings about Sullivan's ability
to confront 'trouble' with only ten cents in his pocket, so he has
taken the precaution of having a studio identification card sewed
into the sole of each of his boots. The studio chiefs know that Sullivan's
mind "is made up" and rather than argue with him, they
encourage and humor the eccentric director's wishes. The studio execs
decide to make his nomadic travels a publicity stunt and provide
him with "an advance man in front, a follow-upper behind." Public
relations specialists Mr. Casalais (Franklin Pangborn) and Mr. Jones
(William Demarest) describe their elaborate preparations for an expeditionary "land-yacht" that
follows behind with all the modern, luxurious conveniences (food,
liquor, a hot shower, and support personnel). Sullivan vehemently
objects to the publicity entourage and the luxury van: "Look!
I'm trying to find trouble. I won't find it with six acts of vaudeville
on my tail, at least not the kind I'm looking for."
With the threat of a court-ordered summons to restrain him, Sullivan
is forced to back away and accept the accompaniment of their retinue
of followers.

In the next scene, Sullivan walks along a country highway
in his tramp outfit, carrying a little bandanna-bundle tied on a
stick over his shoulder. Following close behind him as he hitchhikes
on the road is the back-up bus filled with anxious staff and movie
studio personnel. Sensational publicity copy is dictated to the press: "Thus
begins this remarkable expedition into the valley of the shadow of
adversity...prey to passing prowlers, poverty and policemen...with
only ten cents in his pocket...John Lloyd Sullivan, the Calef of
Comedy departed Hollywood at four o'clock this morning."

In a classic farcical, slapstick, briskly sped-up,
cross-country chase scene, after he is picked up by a thirteen-year-old
hot-rodder (Robert Winkler) who is wearing a crash helmet and is "studyin'
to be a whippet tanker" - in a low-riding, home-built, souped-up
Ford roadster (labeled U.S.A. TANK CORPSE, NO. 999999), Sullivan
is pursued at breakneck speed by the studio's bus. In the comical
spoof, all the occupants of the bus who were sent to observe and
protect him - the doctor, a chauffeur, the 'colored' cook (a stereotyped
role played by Charles R. Moore), a young radio operator with earphones,
a secretary, a cameraman, and other studio personnel - 'eight stooges'
- are wildly thrown about in the race. To the well-timed sounds of The
William Tell Overture in the Keystone Cops type scene, the bus
careens around corners. Dishes, tables, food, and people are bounced
and chaotically tossed and sprawled around - the black cook tumbles
about and ends up with his face in a bowl of white pancake batter
- an unforgettable reverse-image of a black in whiteface! A motorcycle
cop on the side of the road is splashed with water by the roadster.
He throws his newspaper to the ground and climbs on his bike to chase
after them. In the next instant, the bus roars by - predictably,
he is covered with mud.

At the end of the chase after running into a hay wagon
- and after the "dirty trick" he played on them, Sullivan
hasn't really lost the trail of the land-yacht, so he bargains in
a "fair" and "square proposition" for more space
to go on alone until they meet again in Las Vegas in a few weeks.

First Voyage or 'Movie' of Sullivan's Travels:

After getting them to agree to a compromise, Sullivan
begins walking down a country road and soon gets a sweaty job (in
exchange for food and lodging) at an isolated farmhouse. In a beefcake
pose, bare-chested Sullivan swings his axe in the middle of a backyard
pile of wood for two elderly and lonely sisters. From a second story
window, the sexually-starved, lecherous country widow Miz Zeffie
(Esther Howard) peers at him and coquettishly calls down from around
lace curtains: "Yoo-hoo." In their second floor bedroom,
her thin, dour sister Ursula (Almira Sessions) cleans the room as
they discuss their lascivious interest in their new yard worker: "Oh,
I do hope he likes it here. It's so hard to keep a man." Miz
Zeffie looks at a picture of her deceased husband Joseph, with a
piece of black crepe draped across the top of the frame, and decides
to lend the poor man clothes.

Squeezed (imprisoned) between the two sisters in the
somber picture show audience in the next scene, a scene that satirizes
how films can bore theatre audiences, Sullivan wears Joseph's striped
suit. Other common folk seated around them in the theatre make distracting
noises or chew loudly - there are the sounds of crying children,
the crinkling of paper wrappers, the blowing of a whistle, and the
loud sounds of indigestion of a man munching on popcorn. The overly-amorous
farmer's widow Miz Zeffie extends her gloved hand over Sullivan's
- he retracts his hand and folds his arms across his chest. The rural
theatre's marquee displays the titles of the uninteresting triple
feature of somber and pretentious films [compare these titles to
the three titles of Sullivan's films]:

3 Features Tonight
Beyond These Tears
The Valley of the Shadow
The Buzzard of Berlin
also
SWINGO